During a violent revolution in Sierra Leone our US Marines, in co-operation with our President, a Maine Senator, the US State Department and a US Navy Admiral, rescued twenty-six orphans, ages two to thirteen years from certain death, by airlifting them and their caretaker to a US Navy warship waiting off the West African coast. The children arrived aboard wet, cold, hungry, nearly naked, and without any documentation. All their papers were lost when soldiers ransacked their orphanage. Loving families in Canada, the US, and in New Zealand had processed the children for adoption.

A picture of the helicopter air rescue made the front page of the New York Times, but once aboard the Navy ship, it was discovered that the orphans had no papers. International legal issues ensued. The twenty-six children and their caretaker were sent to a refugee camp in neighboring Guinea.

Canadian and US law allows entry for documented orphans who are about to be adopted. Both countries waived all requirements for the eighteen orphans who traveled to their new families. New Zealand refused entry for the remaining eight orphans, condemning them to refugee squalor.

An adoptive mother-to-be urged her Maine Senator to intervene. With state department help, the senator arranged for open-ended visas for the remaining eight undocumented orphans to live in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, if the town’s people would care for the eight orphans for the foreseeable future.